Oak Bay Bays capped off a dominant four days of basketball to earn the 2022 Tsumura Basketball Invitational Tournament title on Saturday night, Dec. 10, at Langley Events Centre.

Oak Bay faced the Kelowna Owls in the final game of the 32-team, 64-game tournament which saw the teams split into three separate brackets of 16 teams (Tournament) and a pair of 8-team brackets (Bracket and Regional).

Victoria’s Spectrum Thunder won the Bracket Title while the Langley Christian Lightning won the Regional Title, with both of those victories coming on Friday, while Oak Bay capped off their four-day run which saw them win by an average margin of victory of nearly 29 points, by defeating the Owls 73-47.

READ ALSO: Langley Christian Lightning and Victoria’s Spectrum Thunder crowned champs at Tsumura

Oak Bay defeated Holy Cross 74-42 in the opener, won 99-56 against Sir Winston Churchill in the quarter-final round and 85-70 over Vancouver College in the semi-final. In that last game, the Bays trailed by 2 points with a period to play, before outscoring their opponent 29-12 over the final 10 minutes.

In Saturday’s final, Kelowna scored the first basket in Saturday’s final before the Bays responded with a 3-pointer and never looked back, leading the rest of the game with an advantage as large as 22 points in the third quarter.

Oak Bay did an effective job of limiting the Owls space in the paint with a great defensive effort keyed by Griffin Arnatt, who was selected Most Valuable Player.

Oak Bay downed the Kelowna Owls 73-47 Saturday, Dec. 10, in the final game of the 32-team, 64-game 2022 Tsumura Basketball Invitational Tournament at Langley Events Centre (Garrett James/Langley Events Centre)

Bays’ coach Chris Franklin credited both Arnatt and Matthew Magnan.

“They both do a lot of really small things that add up in the end. Matthew came out and guarded Semeniuk who was having a fantastic tournament; Griff seems to grab every loose rebound there is on the planet,” the coach said.

“Even though Griff didn’t have a great scoring game today, he helped us with the press break, he rebounded the ball, he guarded big No. 23 (6-6 wing Nate Smith) and Matthew took it to the rim hard. I thought we could go sideways against a good pressing team like Kelowna, and they just wouldn’t let us.”

The Bays’ Toren Franklin was the Player of the Game for Oaky while Smith earned the honour for Kelowna. The Player of the Games were presented by the Vancouver Bandits.

Owen Lewis led the team in scoring with 21 points. Kelowna’s Nash Semeniuk was his team’s top scorer in the contest with 13 points.

READ ALSO: DAY 2: Tsumura Basketball Invitational tournament

In the third-place game ahead of the championship final, Vancouver College defeated Burnaby South 74-60.

For full tournament schedule, results and rosters, please visit www.langleyeventscentre.com/tbi

Next up at Langley Events Centre will be the 2022 Tsumura Basketball Invitational girls’ tournament, starting Wednesday Dec. 14, which will follow the same 32-team, 3-bracket format.

All games are free to attend and will be streamed at www.tfsetv.ca at no cost.